Friday, January 27, 2012

Flag Friday XXXX

Flag Friday is a periodic discussion of the world's national flags; the project is explained and indexed here.

These discussions are about graphic design, and perhaps about nationalism and national symbolism in general. They should not be taken as critical of the countries, ideals, cultures, or people that the flags represent.

Western Sahara

Parsons: Without comment, he gives it a "B", 70/100.

Michael5000: The star-and-crescent is a nice touch that overcomes the monotony of the red/green/black/white school somewhat.

Grade: B+

Yemen

Parsons: Without comment, he gives it a "B", 70/100.

Michael5000: Well, it's hard to say much about a tricolor this late in the alphabet. It's a perfectly respectable flag, in a set of colors that I do not happen to find very inspiring.

Grade: B

Yugoslavia

Parsons: "Serbians will have a chance to change this flag when Montenegro secedes from Yugoslavia. I suggest they take it." They did!

Zambia

Parsons: With "graven images" and "bad colours," but being "original," it gets a "D+", 45/100. Interesting layout doesn't redeem the bad colours on this one," says Parsons.

Michael5000: It's certainly original, but the interesting colors don't redeem the bad layout on this one.

Grade: D+

Zimbabwe

Parsons: " Features a hawk sitting on a toilet," says Parsons. It has a "bad shape," is "too busy," and makes [him] nauseous. "D", 40/100.

Michael5000: The line about a hawk sitting on a toilet is kind of unfortunate, because it's fairly apt. It's actually a representation of the Zimbabwe Bird, an artistic motif found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. But once you've got Parson's one-liner in your head, it's kind of hard to get it back out.

Otherwise, we're looking at an intense but harmonious range of colors laid out in an aggressive, symetrical design.

13 comments:

There's a whole lot more flags out there! Subnational Flags! Who's in? US, UK, Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil would be good for starters. (Though for the US version, you'd need to add F-, F--, F--- and F---- to the list of grades...)

@Cartophiliac: You bet! However, now that Parsons is done, and M5K is done, maybe someone else can do it? ...

@Michael5000: I greatly anticipate the retrospective!

I noticed that your standards seem to change from week to week as exactly what is meant by each letter grade. You seem to have given generally blase reviews to W. Sahara and Yemen this week (even saying that you're not fond of Yemen's colours (when really that's the only thing the flag of Yemen has going for it)), and yet you rated them both higher than Serbia (used for comparison purposes thanks to handy link) whose review contains the phrases "kicking it old school" and "bad-ass", which would make one thing that you generally liked Serbia (although the next sentence in the Serbian review does mention its downside: that its neighbours are all alike). Am I right in that what each grade means changed from week to week? (Because I can guarantee you if I was doing it, it would because I don't have very much internal continuity.)

Do you watch Big Bang Theory? I thought of you while watching it the other day -- Sheldon had a podcast called "Fun With Flags with Dr. Sheldon Cooper." One of the first flags he talked about was the Oregon flag. Some of the stuff just reminded me of you! You should see if you can track it down.

To my mind, a fitting conclusion would be the flags facing off in a great big elimination tournament in the finest M5K tradition. This has been a great little project that I've greatly enjoyed in the last couple of years, Michael. Thanks a lot.

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